


Celestial Drift

by cactustree



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s03e13 Syzygy, F/M, Post-Episode: s03e13 Syzygy, Season 3, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-14 07:55:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29042730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cactustree/pseuds/cactustree
Summary: It would be so easy, if she could only convince herself that it had all just been stars and planets and cosmic energy; that she could take comfort in every additional mile separating them from Comity and every additional minute separating them from January 12, leaving the temporary rift behind in that time and place.~Post-ep to 03x13 “Syzygy.”
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	Celestial Drift

It eased off her like a fog, dissipating into its surroundings, leaving no evidence that it had ever been. Her foot eased off the accelerator in tandem. She was driving the speed limit now, hands steady on the wheel, ten and two. At the next stop sign, she brought the car to a perfect halt as stipulated by the DMV driver’s manual and proceeded only after looking both ways.

The headlights illuminated the mist that hovered over the asphalt, casting the road ahead in an otherworldly glow. For a moment, Scully allowed herself to indulge in the childhood imaginings that this sort of glow used to inspire in her, riding in the backseat of her father’s car on nighttime drives. Mist rising up in every direction, wispy and unformed enough that if she unfocused her eyes, she could trick herself into thinking she saw ghosts gliding through the dark, translucent. The visceral thrill of fear, electric. At night, draped in shadows, everything she thought she understood about the world grew hazy and uncertain.

Then Mulder’s voice beside her, cutting into the darkness like a harsh ray of sun cresting the horizon: “There was a rare planetary alignment.”

Scully blinked. The mist remained, the road ahead glowed, but the ghosts had disappeared.

“Apparently, the effects were intensified by the geographic location.”

Scully ignored him, keeping her eyes on the road. She grasped for her earlier anger at Mulder, but it had slipped out of her reach. In its place she felt only exhaustion, and a creeping sadness she tried to push away.

“So on that date, January 12, the day of the alignment, a large amount of cosmic energy was concentrated on Comity, causing the strange behavior we witnessed—the paranoia, the mass panic. And it was Margi and Terri’s birthday, they were born in 1979, which means they have a Jupiter-Uranus opposition, so all the energy—”

“Mulder,” Scully snapped. Her voice came out weaker than she’d intended, but strong enough to silence him. Good. She needed a moment to think. He was talking to her as though he were picking up a thread of conversation they’d started earlier. But there was no such thread; they hadn’t been communicating in any meaningful way since they arrived in Comity.

They were out of Comity now, and despite herself, Scully had to admit that something felt different. She took a breath and silently repeated Mulder’s words back to herself. _Planetary alignment. Cosmic energy. Jupiter-Uranus opposition._

She shook her head. “Mulder, what you’re saying doesn’t sound any more plausible than satanic ritual sacrifice.”

“Well, how do you explain everything that happened? The deaths, the coffin bursting into flames? The desks moving around on their own in the police station, the guns going off? The way everyone was acting? The way _we_ were acting?”

His last words dropped between them like a heavy stone, disturbing the air around them. Scully flinched. It was one thing to acknowledge the locals’ behavior; such cases of community-wide hysteria were well-documented. Even the seemingly unexplained physical events were no stranger than other phenomena Scully had witnessed in her time with the X-Files. Though some of them had shaken her confidence in the ordered universe with which she was familiar, she always found her way back to the same principle, repeating it like a mantra: _Just because I can’t explain it doesn’t mean there isn’t an explanation_. It had always been this way, for all of human history, and it always would be. The thought put her at ease.

But to suggest that _their_ behavior, hers and Mulder’s—their words and actions, their feelings and intentions—had been influenced by some cosmic force: this thought was more terrifying than any paranormal phenomenon she could imagine.

Her skepticism clamped down on her fear with instinctive speed, like a mousetrap triggered by the lightest pressure. “Right,” she said. “Far be it from me to question your unprofessional conduct as long as there’s a cosmic explanation for it.”

Mulder was silent. In her peripheral vision, she could see him sulking in the passenger seat like a chastised child, shoulders slouched, eyes downcast. Scully took no pleasure in her momentary victory. Her words had only revived the memory of every slight, insult, and small humiliation she’d suffered at Mulder’s hands throughout this case.

Staring at the road ahead, she tried to unfocus her eyes, to see the ghosts, but there was only mist.

“You smell like cigarettes,” Mulder said. It wasn’t an accusation, just a fact: a piece of evidence in the theory he was constructing. Scully didn’t respond, and a long silence stretched out between them before Mulder continued. “I didn’t know you smoked, Scully.”

“I don’t.”

“Well, I don’t drink vodka mixed with orange juice concentrate, and I don’t screw around with local law enforcement when I’m on a case. Look, I don’t know how else to explain it. I didn’t feel like myself the whole time we were in Comity, and now I’m starting to feel like myself again. And I think you feel the same way. You might not agree with my explanation, but I know you felt it, whatever it was.”

The image of Detective White straddling Mulder on his motel bed flashed in front of Scully’s eyes, and her stomach lurched. Once again, she longed for the anger that had simmered beneath her skin only hours ago, but the farther she drove from Comity, the harder she found it even to imagine anger, let alone feel it. There was only sadness now, dull and probing.

Scully shook her head to clear it, then glanced sideways at Mulder. “Vodka and orange juice concentrate?”

He had the grace to look chagrined. “Yeah.”

“That sounds disgusting.”

“It was.” He chuckled softly, and for a moment, she did too. For a moment, a weight lifted from her chest, and she thought that maybe it was all over. But the weight was too heavy; it drifted back down, settling in her chest and then expanding, pushing into her throat. Her eyes blurred.

Beside her, Mulder’s voice was soft and gentle. “Pull over, Scully.” She did.

There were no streetlights on this long stretch of highway, just the rental car’s fog-dulled headlights casting their faces in a bluish glow, like a TV screen in a dark room. Scully blinked her tears away before turning to look at Mulder.

“I’m sorry,” he said, with more sincerity than she was expecting.

His words softened her. Despite everything, she knew she hadn’t been at her best these past couple days either. “I’m sorry, too.”

“No, Scully, I—” Mulder dragged a hand over his face. “You were right. I wasn’t just unprofessional, I was an ass. And I’m sorry. But look, I—I need you to know that what you saw—what you might have thought you saw, with Detective White—”

“Mulder, you don’t have to explain yourself,” Scully said quickly, feeling her face flush red, grateful for the darkness that masked it.

“I want to. Nothing happened, Scully, I swear. I was trying to get her to leave. She—she said she felt weird, I think the planetary alignment must have been affecting her too—”

Scully slouched forward, letting her forehead drop onto the steering wheel.

“Scully?”

Her shoulders shook.

“Scully?” Mulder repeated, his voice growing more alarmed, and so Scully lifted her head from the steering wheel and tilted it back against the seat, allowing him to see that she was laughing.

For a moment Mulder just stared at her, then began to chuckle along with her. She could tell that he wasn’t quite sure what they were laughing at, that he was simply relieved she was laughing and not crying. She decided that this was enough. If she tried to explain how ludicrous it was for him to suggest that a planetary alignment was responsible for an attractive woman throwing herself at him, she’d be veering into dangerous territory. And she’d already traipsed too close to dangerous territory recently. Back at the police station, openly accusing Mulder of continuing to pursue this case because of Detective White—what on God’s green earth had come over her? Scully wasn’t sure exactly when her reaction to seeing Mulder show interest in another woman had turned from detached amusement to barely masked jealousy, but she was going to have to try harder to keep a lid on it.

She glanced over at Mulder once more. As she held his gaze, she felt the pieces of their little universe slot back into place. The weight eased off her chest again, and this time it didn’t come back.

_Just because I can’t explain it_ , Scully reminded herself as she pulled the car back onto the highway, _doesn’t mean there isn’t an explanation_. But although she still felt deeply uncomfortable with the idea that the position of celestial bodies could hold sway over her thoughts and actions, in this moment, she couldn’t help feeling a twinge of envy at Mulder’s willingness to believe. It would be so easy, if she could only convince herself that it had all just been stars and planets and cosmic energy; that she could take comfort in every additional mile separating them from Comity and every additional minute separating them from January 12, leaving the temporary rift behind in that time and place.

But nothing was ever so easy, especially not her relationship with Mulder. The undercurrent of tension, the constant push-and-pull: these elements were as intrinsic to their partnership as salt was to seawater. And there was more, lately. This unspoken thing taking shape between them—Scully was certain they both felt it, though she couldn’t say if they felt the same way about it—further complicated their interactions, adding stumbling blocks, throwing off their balancing act.

But they always found their balance again, in the end. Maybe, Scully thought, people search for answers in the sky because they see themselves reflected there. Like her and Mulder, caught in each other’s gravity, moving in and out of alignment and opposition but never colliding, never drifting away.


End file.
